I return the gesture.
He gets to work lighting his pipe, puffing from it, blowing the excess toward the sky and dousing us all in the sweet, potent scent.
“You got anything else in that bag?” Zali asks.
I take the spoon off her and crouch before the pot, occupying my hands with filling our bowls.
“Like what?” I hear the eager lilt in his voice.
Zali prods a withered branch at the fire. “I don’t know ...candy?”
The man draws a long puff from his pipe, then looks at Zali with a knowing glint in his eye. “That’ll be the answer to your ...sublimecomplexion,” he says, and I can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s no longer picturing himself at the bottom of the food chain. An intruder in our camp.
Zali passes him a shy smile. “So?” she asks, tilting her head, voice hooked with an air of desperation.
“Hard to come by these days.” Another puff, and the man reaches down, taking her serving of stew with both hands.
I still, stare flicking to Zali who stabs me with her own and the faintest shake of her head.
Thisno talkingbusiness is really pinching my fraught, sober nerves.
I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds, handing her my own bowl as I watch the merchant slurp at the broth, then stuff his mouth full of the rabbit I caught. “There was a surplus of it for a while there,” he swallows, then fills his mouth again. “Butnow …”
“Which is why I always ask,” Zali purrs, then takes a delicate sip of her stew.
To him, she probably looks harmless.
Desperate.
Not at all like she could carve him into six chunks in a matter of seconds.
“Well,” he says, slurping back the remainder of his meal in three deep gulps, wiping his beard with his arm. “You’re in luck. However ...” He drops his bowl on the ground between his feet and groans, stretching.
“However?” Zali whines, her eyes twin wells of desperation.
“It’s going to cost a lot more than a simple bowl of rabbit stew. Delicious as it was.”
Zali sets her bowl down and digs beneath her furs, through her robe, pulling out a heavy pouch and tossing it at the man.
He snatches it from the air with a swift hand, loosening the tie, tipping the cascade of gold coins into his palm.
His eyes flare.
“Well,” he breathes, placing his pipe on the ground and stuffing the coins in the sack, not even bothering to count them. He’s probably holding a small fortune—enough to build a bunker large enough to protect an entire family and then some. “I’m at your whim.”
He stands, stepping over the log and scurrying toward his saddlebags, looking far more agile than he did when he entered the camp.
I let my gaze fall into the pits of Zali’s—hard and unblinking. The stare is ruthless, drenched in bloodlust, sending a spike through me that electrifies my fucked-up soul. “And did you harvest it yourself?” she asks, holding my stare.
“Most of it I got from Madame Strings,” the man chimes as he rummages through his pack, and I hear the clink of jars banging against each other. “She’s based in Parith most months, but she’s the only truly reliable source these days. I do, however, have one small jar I harvested myself.”
Fire flares through my veins.
Not the best hunter, you see.
What a fucking lie.
Zali nods the slightest amount, and I slide the ring from my finger, feeling my shell split apart.
